Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says the Oculus Rift will need to sell 50-100 million units to be a success.

Speaking yesterday in an earnings call with Facebook investors, Zuckberg stated that those numbers would be necessary for the Rift to be “a meaningful thing as a computing platform.” He would go on to say that he didn’t expect it to actually get that point anytime in the near future.

“It’s hard to predict exactly but I don’t think it’s going to get to 50 million or 100 million units in the next few years,” he stated. “So that will take a few cycles of the device to get there.”

According to Zuckerberg, it will be at least “a ten year thing” that will involve “building the first set of devices and building the audience and the ecosystem.” Once that process is completed he believes the Oculus Rift will “become a business.”

What remains to be seen, of course, is whether or not there’s a market to sell 100 million Oculus Rifts, even over a ten year period. Only time will tell, but with $2 billion already invested in the device, we’re willing to bet that Facebook has some sort of plan to help make it happen.

That, at least, is what some are taking from a recent posting on Persson’s personal Twitter account indicating that he’s “over” the subject.

“And about now I’m officially over being upset about Facebook buying Oculus,” said Persson in his Tweet. “I’m upset about there being a hole in my favorite sock instead.”

While this statement on its own couldn’t be taken as a full reversal from his previous fiery opinions about Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR, follow-up statements would seem to indicate that Perrson may no longer be completely opposed to the idea. For instance, replying to a follower on Twitter, Perrson stated that it would be “up to the Minecraft dev team” to decide about making a version of the game for Oculus Rift. Oculus VR’s John Carmack, in turn, affirmed that the company would be happy to lend a hand.

“Say the word, ship the source, and I’ll make sure it runs well on you-know-what,” said Carmack.

It’s worth saying, of course, that all of this could add up to nothing. Even so, there are probably more than a few Minecraft hoping that this will mark the beginning of a renewed partnership between Persson and Oculus VR.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/minecraft-creator-officially-over-facebook-buying-oculus-vr/feed/1Zenimax Accuses Carmack of Stealing Tech For Oculus VRhttp://www.gamefront.com/zenimax-accuses-carmack-of-stealing-tech-for-oculus-vr/
http://www.gamefront.com/zenimax-accuses-carmack-of-stealing-tech-for-oculus-vr/#commentsThu, 01 May 2014 16:56:31 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=272107id Software's John Carmack worked on Oculus while he was a Zenimax employee, and Zenimax says the tech he developed belongs to the company.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Zenimax lawyers have sent two letters to Oculus stating that Carmack “improperly” took intellectual property with him when he left the company. The gist of it is this: Carmack worked at id when he was developing VR tech for Oculus, and since he was an employee, Zenimax is laying claim to the work he did there.

In a statement sent to GameFront and Engadget, Zenimax lawyers said the letters were meant to inform Oculus of the former’s “legal rights:”

“ZeniMax confirms it recently sent formal notice of its legal rights to Oculus concerning its ownership of key technology used by Oculus to develop and market the Oculus Rift. ZeniMax’s technology may not be licensed, transferred or sold without ZeniMax Media’s approval. ZeniMax’s intellectual property rights arise by reason of extensive VR research and development works done over a number of years by John Carmack while a ZeniMax employee, and others. ZeniMax provided necessary VR technology and other valuable assistance to Palmer Luckey and other Oculus employees in 2012 and 2013 to make the Oculus Rift a viable VR product, superior to other VR market offerings.

“The proprietary technology and know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee, and used by Oculus, are owned by ZeniMax. Well before the Facebook transaction was announced, Mr. Luckey acknowledged in writing ZeniMax’s legal ownership of this intellectual property. It was further agreed that Mr. Luckey would not disclose this technology to third persons without approval. Oculus has used and exploited ZeniMax’s technology and intellectual property without authorization, compensation or credit to ZeniMax. ZeniMax and Oculus previously attempted to reach an agreement whereby ZeniMax would be compensated for its intellectual property through equity ownership in Oculus but were unable to reach a satisfactory resolution. ZeniMax believes it is necessary to address these matters now and will take the necessary action to protect its interests.”

Meanwhile, Oculus released its own statement to WSJ, claiming it plans to defend itself, presumably in court.

“It’s unfortunate, but when there’s this type of transaction, people come out of the woodwork with ridiculous and absurd claims,” the statement said. “We intend to vigorously defend Oculus and its investors to the fullest extent.”

What’s not clear is whether Facebook was aware of Zenimax’s claims on any Oculus tech before it made its deal with Oculus, or how this development might affect that transaction. If Zenimax’s claims on Oculus tech bear out, it’ll likely mean Facebook and Oculus will owe licensing fees to Zenimax on each Oculus headset the companies sell. Right now, that’s a pretty low number, since Oculus still hasn’t even created a retail model yet.

GameFront has reached out to Oculus and Zenimax for further comment, and we’ll update this story as more information comes in.

Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR will be good for Sony’s own VR efforts.

That, at least, was the sentiment expressed by Shuhei Yoshida, the head of Sony Computer Entertainment’s Worldwide Studios. Speaking recently about the subject, Yoshida described Facebook’s recent $2 billion deal as a valuable validation for both Oculus’s and Sony’s VR efforts.

“I woke up that morning and saw the announcement,” said Yoshida. “We meant to validate Oculus by announcing Morpheus, and the Oculus guys knew what we were working on. I think they were waiting for us to make the announcement, so it would be Sony and Oculus together. But now Oculus being acquired by Facebook is helping to validate our efforts.”

Yoshida would go on to describe Sony’s work with its Morpheus VR headset, originally announced last month at GDC, as one that will depend in part on cooperation with a variety of parties outside the company.

“We need to share knowledge,” he said. “We can’t just make the hardware; it’s the game applications that need to be designed well. We need time for developers to experiment and find the killer application and, at the same time, we need to learn how VR applications should be designed.” The initial step, Yoshida affirmed, will be the delivery of Morpheus dev kits to interested developers.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/sony-boss-facebooks-oculus-deal-validates-vr/feed/0Oculus VR Receives Death Threats After Facebook Dealhttp://www.gamefront.com/oculus-vr-receives-death-threats-after-facebook-deal/
http://www.gamefront.com/oculus-vr-receives-death-threats-after-facebook-deal/#commentsTue, 01 Apr 2014 18:13:12 +0000Stew Shearerhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=269210Oculus VR staff have been subject to death threats following Facebook’s purchase of the company. Gamers were made aware of...

Oculus VR staff have been subject to death threats following Facebook’s purchase of the company.

Gamers were made aware of the threats by a Reddit comment from Oculus VR founder Palmer Lucky. In said comment he stated that he, his staff and even their families have been receiving threats and harassing phone calls in the wake of Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition deal.

“We expected a negative reaction from people in the short term,” said Lucky. “We did not expect to be getting so many death threats and harassing phone calls that extended to our families. We know we will prove ourselves with actions and not words, but that kind of shit is unwarranted, especially since it is impacting people who have nothing to do with Oculus.”

This, of course, is far from the first example of upset gamers issuing threats of violence to figures in the gaming industry. In July of 2013, for instance, Treyarch design director David Vonderhaar received similar death threats after he announced a small change to the to the reload time of a weapon in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. As in that case, you can most likely assume that the voices behind the Oculus VR threats are cowards who only say such inflammatory things because they feel safe behind the anonymity of their computer screens.

“We have no plans nor interest in following this path!” Roberts stated. “We don’t need to go to anyone with deep pockets to make OUR dream a reality. To mass-produce hardware like the Rift, you need an outlay of hundreds of millions of dollars. Luckily our ships are digital so we have hardly any cost of goods, just the cost of developing the universe of Star Citizen and running servers that Star Citizen’s universe will be simulated on. Thanks to the generosity of the Star Citizen community we have these two things covered.”

Roberts added that he’s been down the acquisition route before and there’s a reason why he wanted to make Star Citizen independently.

He also said that, while he was surprised by the news of the Facebook/Oculus VR marriage, he still supports Rift and believes it will only help get the headset into the hands of consumers sooner.

“My hope is that Facebook’s funding will let Oculus compete with much bigger companies and deliver an attractively priced consumer headset at the scale needed for mass market adoption without the loss of the incredible passion that convinced me to back the project,” Roberts said. “I haven’t heard or seen anything to the contrary so until I do we are fully committed to supporting the Rift.”

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/chris-roberts-cloud-imperium-wont-sell-out/feed/1Why You’re Right to Be Worried About the Facebook-Oculus Dealhttp://www.gamefront.com/why-youre-right-to-be-worries-about-the-facebook-oculus-deal/
http://www.gamefront.com/why-youre-right-to-be-worries-about-the-facebook-oculus-deal/#commentsThu, 27 Mar 2014 16:51:19 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=268540Oculus' sale to Facebook is a fundamental change in what the company is and has said it would be -- and the proper response is skepticism until evidence is presented to the contrary.

The most visible reaction had to have been that of Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson, himself one of the top backers of the Rift during its 2012 Kickstarter campaign (Notch kicked in $10,000 to fund the prototype Rift head-mounted display). Notch mentioned that his company, Mojang, had been in talks with Oculus to create a version of Minecraft for its HMD, which still has not been released as a consumer product as of this writing.

“Facebook creeps me out,” Notch remarked on Twitter.

Upon hearing about the Facebook deal, Notch said he killed Mojang’s potential agreement with Oculus. “Facebook creeps me out,” he remarked on Twitter.

He’s not the only one. Responses on a Reddit post from Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey often share the same sentiment. Members of the gaming community, many of whom have been very positive on Oculus and on the Rift headset, seem especially upset about Facebook taking over ownership of the company — despite reassurances from Luckey that Oculus will remain an independent entity within Facebook.

A blog post on the Oculus website notes that Oculus will be able to advance VR not just in games, but also into social and other spheres, thanks to the deal. And on Reddit, Luckey reaffirms Oculus’ commitment to gaming, which is what got it started in the first place.

But players and fans of Oculus tech are right to be skeptical of the deal — after all, Facebook hasn’t given them many reasons not to be.

A Bad Rap

Just perusing the Wikipedia page titled “Criticism of Facebook” is a bit eye-opening. It’s a lengthy page that notes a number of major issues people have had with the 1.26 billion user-strong service. Facebook’s business model today is in selling user data — you use Facebook for free because, as others have aptly put it, you are the product that makes Facebook money.

In and of itself, the fact that users take part in Facebook and in so doing give up information about themselves to be used for advertising and other potentially lucrative reasons is not necessarily an issue. However, Facebook has a history of being less than willing to protect user privacy, and very much willing to position things like certain privacy controls in a way that makes them difficult for users to find, or for users to even to realize they exist at all. Facebook hasn’t built much of a reputation of being extremely trustworthy when it comes to user data, at the very least.

It’s nice to remain hopeful that Oculus will stay what always has been once it’s inside Facebook, but there’s no guarantee.

That Facebook has acquired other companies without necessarily screwing with them too much is nice and much-noted following the deal. The prime example is Instagram, the mobile photography social network that Facebook bought last year for about $1 billion in cash and stock.

Instagram is still Instagram right now, and functions mostly as it always did, and that’s definitely a positive precedent at this point.

It’s nice to remain hopeful that Oculus will stay what it always has been now that it’s inside Facebook, but there’s also no guarantee. Even if it does remain the same company, Oculus’ fundamental mandate today is different than it might have been when the company first started out. Though gaming may have never been more than an entry point for Rift and VR technology into the wider mainstream, it was still an area that has seen and surely would have continued to see substantial development.

Oculus might have more money because of the Facebook deal than it did before, but the suggestion by other gaming and tech journalists that now that Facebook is involved, gamers will get the VR they’ve always imagined out of Oculus, rings a bit false. Remember, the company had received some $100 million in venture capital funding late last year — it’s not as if it was hurting for cash, or a lack of funding was holding the company back (despite its original Kickstarter narrative).

Facebook means more money for VR, but that also doesn’t necessarily translate into good news for the gaming space. All it definitely means is that Oculus will be putting a larger focus on social sooner than it otherwise might have.

Regardless, there’s a reason Luckey took to Reddit as soon as the Facebook deal was announced — Facebook is a company that has earned a relatively bad reputation, and it was clear there would be backlash to the decision. Many people have little trust for the social networking behemoth. What’s more, many of those same people put a great deal of trust in Oculus and its vision; they even pledged their money to give the Oculus the means to bring the Rift to consumers.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/why-youre-right-to-be-worries-about-the-facebook-oculus-deal/feed/5Early On, Oculus Rift Creator Said He Wouldn’t Sell Outhttp://www.gamefront.com/early-on-oculus-rift-creator-said-he-wouldnt-sell-out/
http://www.gamefront.com/early-on-oculus-rift-creator-said-he-wouldnt-sell-out/#commentsWed, 26 Mar 2014 14:01:37 +0000Mike Sharkeyhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=268469“Oculus is going forward in a big way, but a way that still lets me focus on the community first,...

“Oculus is going forward in a big way, but a way that still lets me focus on the community first, and not sell out to a large company.” — Rift creator Palmer Luckey in 2012

Oculus VR selling out to Facebook went over about as well as an AIG bonus payment. Gamers aren’t happy and those who backed the Oculus Rift from the get go via Kickstarter are even more upset. And for good reason: Rift creator Palmer Luckey intimated on numerous occasions that he didn’t want to sell out to a larger company.

Before there was Oculus VR, the now sizable company that Facebook shelled out a reported $2 billion for, there was Palmer Luckey, virtual reality enthusiast, toiling away on his own to create a VR HMD. In early 2012, he’d solved many of the issues that prevented VR from fulfilling its potential, and he was ready to actually make and ship his HMD for enthusiasts, with a little help from Kickstarter.

“The goal is to start a Kickstarter project on June 1st that will end on July 1st, shipping afterwards as soon as possible,” Luckey wrote in an April 2012 post on the Meant to be Seen forums. “I won’t make a penny of profit off this project, the goal is to pay for the costs of parts, manufacturing, shipping, and credit card/Kickstarter fees with about $10 left over for a celebratory pizza and beer.”

I added the emphasis in the quote above, not to suggest Luckey promised he would never profit from his invention, but to demonstrate the Rift’s origins are humble, generous, and community driven. Luckey made that point even clearer when he announced he’d found a number of partners to help with his project, including Valve and Epic games, but still wasn’t interested in selling (emphasis again added):

“The extent of their relationships with Oculus varies, but I can promise at least a few partnerships. Oculus is going forward in a big way, but a way that still lets me focus on the community first, and not sell out to a large company.”

Sadly, that’s just what Luckey did when he sold Oculus VR to Facebook yesterday, and as Minecraft creator and Rift backer Markus “Notch” Persson said, it just didn’t seem right:

“I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.”

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/early-on-oculus-rift-creator-said-he-wouldnt-sell-out/feed/11Facebook Buys Kickstarted VR Company Oculus for $2 billionhttp://www.gamefront.com/facebook-buys-kickstarted-vr-company-oculus-for-2-billion/
http://www.gamefront.com/facebook-buys-kickstarted-vr-company-oculus-for-2-billion/#commentsTue, 25 Mar 2014 23:44:51 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=268409Meanwhile, Notch backed out of a deal to make a Minecraft version for Rift when he heard about the Facebook deal.

According to the release, Facebook is paying $400 million in the sale, with 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock, valued at $1.6 billion. Hitting certain unnamed milestones would earn Oculus another $300 million in cash and stocks, it said.

According to a statement on the Oculus website, the company and Facebook “shared an even deeper vision of creating a new platform for interaction that allows billions of people to connect in a way never before possible.”

“At first glance, it might not seem obvious why Oculus is partnering with Facebook, a company focused on connecting people, investing in internet access for the world and pushing an open computing platform. But when you consider it more carefully, we’re culturally aligned with a focus on innovating and hiring the best and brightest; we believe communication drives new platforms; we want to contribute to a more open, connected world; and we both see virtual reality as the next step.”

The statement goes on to state that Oculus has received more than 75,000 orders for development kits of its Rift headset (each valued at $300). The Rift project got its major start on Kickstarter in 2012, where it earned just under $2.5 million, with a stated goal of $250,000. It later brought in another $75 million in Series B venture capital funding.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg posted a statement of his own on the social network, noting that Oculus would “continue to operate independently” within Facebook and would continue to focus on gaming, at least for now.

“Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won’t be changing and we hope to accelerate,” Zuckerberg wrote. “The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there’s a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We’re going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.”

Meanwhile, the news of Facebook’s acquisition of the company has spurred at least one well-known game developer to cut loose of working on the Rift. Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson noted on Twitter that he and Minecraft developer Mojang had been in talks with Oculus to bring a version of the super-popular open-world game to the Rift headset.

“I just canceled that deal,” Persson wrote on Twitter. “Facebook creeps me out.”

We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.

Notch went on in a blog post, saying that while the future of VR may well be in social, “I don’t want to work with social, I want to work with games.” He also mentioned his own donation to the Rift project on Kickstarter, saying, “And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.”

“Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts,” he wrote. “Facebook is not a game tech company. Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers, and nothing but building user numbers. People have made games for Facebook platforms before, and while it worked great for a while, they were stuck in a very unfortunate position when Facebook eventually changed the platform to better fit the social experience they were trying to build.”

Other developers might not be quite as negative toward the social networking behemoth, as noted in a report from Polygon polling developers making VR games. But like Notch, one has to wonder how the Rift’s 9,521 other Kickstarter backers have to be feeling right now, since they’ll see no return on the money they gave to help make the Rift a reality. Meanwhile, the Facebook sale will bring the company’s creators some 800 times the amount they acquired through crowdfunding.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/facebook-buys-kickstarted-vr-company-oculus-for-2-billion/feed/14Win a Trip to the League of Legends World Finalshttp://www.gamefront.com/win-a-trip-to-the-league-of-legends-world-finals/
http://www.gamefront.com/win-a-trip-to-the-league-of-legends-world-finals/#commentsTue, 18 Sep 2012 00:25:42 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=184222It's a Facebook contest.

Logitech is running a contest on its Facebook page that could send you to Los Angeles for the League of Legends Season 2 World Finals.

You just have to give up a Facebook like and the information that goes with it.

Hit up Logitech’s Facebook page here to enter the contest. You’ll need to dump some information on a form, but once you do, you’ll have a chance at the prize: two tickets to LA for the finals on Oct. 13.

You’ve got until 11:59 p.m. on Sept 20 to enter the contest. Check out the official rules right here.

In what could very well be a sign that social gaming is in decline (or, at least, was incredibly overvalued as a cultural force and financial prospect), or perhaps just another sign of Electronic Arts’ amazing skills at running their subsidiaries, rumors are spreading that Zynga runner up PopCap, creator of Plants vs Zombies, Bejeweled, and Zuma, is set to undergo deep cuts to staff.

The rumor comes courtesy of 3D Realms owner George Broussard, who laid it out plainly on Twitter: “EA bought PopCap a year ago for a billion dollars. Sources say shakeup and layoff’s are imminent at PopCap.” Broussard, when asked which sources, said “mine.”

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/rumor-layoffs-at-popcap-imminent/feed/3Why Facebook Games Fail: A Lack of Funhttp://www.gamefront.com/why-facebook-games-fail-a-lack-of-fun/
http://www.gamefront.com/why-facebook-games-fail-a-lack-of-fun/#commentsThu, 16 Aug 2012 16:36:17 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=180078The trouble with Facebook games is that they're designed to trick you into spending money, not to deliver fun.

The machines are flashy and constantly bombarding the senses with lights and music, even when they’re not necessary — almost all slot machines in the modern casino are computerized, and yet mechanical elements like rotating reels and pull levers still exist. They’re designed to suck you in, and they give just a little reward very often to keep players playing them, which actually trigger pleasure responses in your brain. Statistically, slot machines only pay out about 75 percent of the money they take in, and yet they’re hugely popular and profitable in any casino because of all these factors. Wander through any gaming floor, and you’ll always find someone pumping quarters into a machine.

Facebook games are a lot like slot machines. They don’t give you money, but they are designed with a similar form and function in mind. Repetitive tasks; lots of color and motion; rewards divvied out over time, in small doses, to keep you playing. And as has been seen and remarked upon with hugely popular games like FarmVille, they seem to engender addictive behavior in a lot of the same ways that casinos have been capitalizing on for decades.

In just the last month, Facebook games have gotten a lot of attention as the massive purveyor of such titles, Zynga, has started sinking under its habit of buying game studios in search of The Next Big Thing and the waning of its player base for titles like FarmVille and Mafia Wars. The resultant attitude from much of the gaming community has been, “Well, of course. Casual Facebook games were propped up on non-true-gamers like soccer moms, and of course that well would eventually run dry.” Or, “Facebook is a terrible platform for games and of course people are going to realize that.”

I’d argue that neither of those assertions is true: There’s not some sort of inherent lack of value in the casual game or the casual gamer, be they grandpa or soccer mom; nor is Facebook somehow an inferior platform for gaming. The trouble is and has been that Facebook games as we know them are barely games at all — they’re slot machines. Except they don’t pay you anything, and they’re not fun.

Take a look at the recently released Outernauts. Here’s a game that has a great pedigree, developed by Insomniac, the studio behind the Ratchet and Clank and Resistance series. It’s known for making great triple-A hits. And in a fascinating interview with Kotaku, Insomniac Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings details how, in making a Facebook title, the developer pushed back against making a Zynga-like game — a game dependent on hassling friends and limiting players’ ability to play in order to encourage them to buy things within the game.

But by the time it was released, Outernauts was basically a Zynga clone, with all the same issues. It’s a game dependent on “energy,” a currency which every player action depletes and which is only restored by either waiting, inviting friends to play the game, or paying. It’s a game built around bugging friends to play. And it contains an in-game currency you earn through playing to use on things you need to advance in the game, as well as a parallel economy that’s almost impossible to come by without paying money into the game, and which hamstrings your play if you don’t.

So Outernauts, a game made by what could be argued as a “real” video game developer, falls into the same awful traps as Zynga and its army of ‘Ville clones. And while Outernauts is engaging for a bit, it suffers from the same issues as those ‘Ville games: it’s not really that fun.

The true trouble with Facebook games has nothing to do with the kind of players they attract or don’t, or the platform itself. The irritating things about Facebook games — the constant need to spread the word to others, the energy systems that limit your ability to actually enjoy playing the game — aren’t native to the platform, they’re just bad ideas that keep getting propagated. You see these same ideas migrating to the mobile space. They’re not even inherent issues with the free-to-play model. They are, in my view, born of a single fundamental issue: the people making these games are making them to try to get you addicted. They’re not trying to make games at all.

We’ve been hearing about Mass Effect 3‘s cross-media Galaxy at War game for a while now, which will reward players for doing other crap (like playing multiplayer co-op and downloading the hinted at but unannounced Mass Effect 3 mobile game) toward getting the best Mass Effect 3 ending. Now Electronic Arts has rolled out a Facebook tie-in as well, but it doesn’t seem to be part of the greater Galaxy at War experience.

Called Mission Command, the Facebook game isn’t so much a game as it is a clever bit of viral marketing. When you log in, the game poses you a “mission” in which you have two choices. Mission 2, the one I just participated in, gave you the option of either flirting with or rejecting Liara T’soni. You make your decision (apparently macking on Liara is the Paragon choice, although Tali would disagree with that assessment if it were my character she were talking about) and then type in your best line for how you’d either pick up or let down Liara. All those bits of textual ridiculousness go into the comments on the mission, then BioWare and/or EA pick one. The winner gets a couple of tokens for virtual items for Xbox 360, including Avatar clothes and in-game junk. You can also share your answers on your Facebook wall.

The more you play, the better your supposed chances of winning, with an Xbox 360 and a collector’s edition of the game among the potential prizes. You can also “recruit” your friends into Mission Command, and if the game picks up enough players, everybody will get a toy Normandy avatar item for their Xbox Live avatars.

We’re still waiting to see how BioWare intends to integrate the larger battle against the Reapers into The Entire Internet, and even though I spent a mere two minutes with Mission Command, I wasn’t too impressed. Here’s hoping Galaxy at War stuff gets more interesting. Anyway, you can check it out here.

FarmVille maker Zynga made an initial public offering for its company on Dec. 17, selling 100 million shares at $10 each, but its stock has been all over the place since it became available.

According to Business Insider, Zynga stock had fallen 4 percent from its $10 initial price, down to about $9.10, on the second morning of trading; then it closed at $9.05, a dip of nearly 10 percent.

Bloomberg is predicting even more volatility out of the stock. Analyst Paul Kedrosky thinks the stock will bottom out at $6 during the next six months, citing a weak market coupled with “weak fundamentals” from Zynga itself.

It’s not all bad news. In fact, Zynga’s IPO raised $1 billion, which makes it the biggest tech IPO since Google way back in 2004. Investors and traders might be causing the stock to fluctuate, but at least Zynga has some scratch to do something with. It might be a little too early to start shouting the social game maker’s doom.

]]>
EA has purchased Facebook devs KlickNation, known for SuperHero City and Age of Champions, and have folded them under the BioWare Social unit. KlickNation also gets a rename and will henceforth be known as BioWare Sacramento.

Furthermore, the BioWare Social group will now be led by former KlickNation CEO Mark Otero.

I would presume that the company will help out with something Mass Effect-related, possibly to tie in with the Galaxy at War thing. Or maybe the new BioWare studio will make something original not meant to tie in with a AAA title. Maybe. I guess I just don’t know.